Here’s what the producers had in mind…The remake to Tom Holland’s 1985 Fright Night has gone through an interesting metamorphosis. There’s no telling where new hire Marti Noxon (Mad Men, Buffy the Vampire Slayer) will take the story for Dreamworks, but I’ve been privy to some interesting intel regarding the pitch the producers were kicking around up until about a month ago.

Sources tell me the new Fright Night was going to take a meta approach and acknowledge the existence of Holland’s film. And like the original, the Charley Brewster-like protagonist would need to enlist some help to take on a vampire menace. Because we’re living in sad times where horror hosts are a rare breed and are all but foreign to the Scream generation, however, the film’s hero wouldnâ€™t be calling on Peter Vincent (essayed in the original film by the late, great Roddy McDowell), he’d be seeking out none other than actor Chris Sarandon himself, the man who played the vampire Jerry Dandrige! Together, the hero and Sarandon would take on the big bad bloodsucker.

Wild, right? I wonder if he’d make Sarandon where his low-neck night club sweater…

That’s certainly one way to update it. And it stays true to the essence of the original. If you recall, we reported that when the remake was in development at Sony, the story was being groomed to be set against the backdrop of an amusement park. That idea was ultimately scrapped when the remake took the jump to Dreamworks.

Still, it’s unknown if the meta approach described above is what Marti Noxon is developing. I figured you’d like to get a taste of one of the ideas that was on the table.